Abstract
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for motor function, motivation, pleasure emotion and reward related behavior, and dysfunction of dopamine is implicated in the etiology and pathology of mental disorder and neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and depression. However, the molecular mechanism of dopamine remains still unknown. Recently, we analyzed dopaminergic intracellular signaling using phosphoproteomic approach, and found that dopamine activates Rap1 signal in medium spiny neurons of nucleus accumbens to enhance the neuronal excitability. Here, I introduce this research and discuss the role of molecular mechanism analysis for neuropsychological diseases.
